Tag Archive: Edgar Rice Burroughs

A unique space fantasy heroine finds herself aligning with a classic pulp fantasy heroine in Dynamite‘s latest mash-up mini-series, Barbarella/Dejah Thoris, with its first issue arriving in comic book stores today. How exactly do you put together two characters from such different source material? A magic artifact, of course! When Barbarella and Dejah encounter a strange object in their respective worlds, what else can they do but work together to figure out why they are suddenly together, far from their familiar worlds?

Writer Leah Williams and artist Germán Gárcia set up a murder mystery where an alien scientist in Barbarella’s world is killed minutes before an expected meeting with Barbarella. In the series’ first issue, readers will find an evenly split introductory story putting these leads together. One of them isn’t too happy about it. Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ fantasy adventure heroine Dejah Thoris mixed up with the likes of the risqué Barbarella of Jean-Claude Forest 1960s comics may seem like an unlikely pairing, but why not?

Sometimes you ask for something and it magically appears. Like the new Dark Horse Comics’ graphic novel Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Once and Future Tarzan. I originally reviewed a one-shot initial version of this story here at borg way back in 2012. I liked the retro adventure vibe and thought that it begged for an expanded story. At last writer Alan Gordon has taken Tarzan into the distant future in a full 15-part epic, as a 300-year-old survivalist who encounters a future world right out of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, Nolan and Johnson’s Logan’s Run, or Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. Tarzan and Jane join a tribe of warrior women on their quest–Tarzan is a well-educated leader who communes with the animal kingdom, and Jane brings her own special skill set to this adventure.

Readers will find a densely written graphic novel with many literary references and a thoroughly researched, thoroughly faithful look at Burroughs’ Tarzan, with the building of a great expansion world for the character, loyal to the spirit of the original stories. It’s a mix of fantasy and James Bond action, as the Tarzan of the past confronts a future world reeling from decades of mishandling. Tarzan has been secretly protecting animals, species other humans failed to protect, and Tarzan brings them into this future. It’s a story of the past catching up with mankind, and a glimmer of hope via the legend of Tarzan. Can the future still be saved for all of life on Earth, before nothing is left of the natural world? Gordon’s story suggests the possibility and the story itself serves as its own sci-fi warning to take care of what we have before it’s gone. The story isn’t dark and daunting, but it has that fantasy adventure tone of the age of serial adventures, peppered with humorous dialogue, too (some of the callbacks to Tarzan’s past are particularly funny).

The imagery of artists Thomas Yeates(Prince Valiant, Conan) and Bo Hampton(Viking Glory, Batman) is gorgeous, and it wouldn’t succeed so well without the complimentary color palette used by colorists Steve Oliff and Lori Almeida. It has the nostalgic look of Illustrated Classics, but with more movement and action, something that will appeal to fans of Matt Kindt’s Dept.H and Black Badge, Phil Noto’s retro styled art, P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Wagner’s The Ring, and the imagery of The Hobbit artist David Wenzel. Parts feel like a voyage of Captain Nemo, Captain Blood, Conan the Barbarian, or Red Sonja. All of these fantasies share the common quest, the world outside of a present day reality, stocked with nicely fleshed-out legend and lore.

As you’re planning to attend the upcoming return of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to theaters, a new book released this week is going to take readers of all ages on a tour of the history of real dinosaurs and the history of the study of dinosaurs itself. A fresh look at the science of paleontology and the resulting knowledge about the life, environment, and structure of the major species of dinosaurs is the subject of Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom. Authors Christine Argot and Luc Vivès, researchers at The French National Museum of Natural History in Paris, use the museum’s own paleontology gallery as the starting point to tell how scientists developed the study and reconstruction of dinosaurs since the gallery first opened in 1898. Everyone has a favorite dinosaur, and whether yours is a stegosaurus, triceratops, diplodocus, allosaurus, iguanodon, brontosaurus, megalosaurus, or tyrannosaurus, you’ll marvel at the spectacular images of their skeletons on display as scientists have updated them consistent with improved knowledge and techniques across the years.

Interlacing the work of paleontologists, geologists, museum curators, and other scientists around the world, and changing views of remarkable fossil discoveries (like placement, stance, and presence of feathers) over nearly 150 years, the authors combine photographs of their collection with images resulting from digs, artists’ interpretations, magazine articles, and museum archives. From tales of dragons and mythical beasts to speculative works from John Milton’s Paradise Lost to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, from Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, and Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, ideas of fantasy have informed science and vice versa. Movements and individuals have changed our outlook into history, via wealthy benefactors, scholars, educators, and artisans. From lost displays in the Crystal Palace to the artistry of Charles R. Knight, the history of dinosaurs is also the evolution of the thinking of mankind. The result will fascinate both young and old readers, whether Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom will be your kid’s first book of dinosaurs or a companion book for a high school or college museum studies course, or simply a resource for you to enjoy.

One story recounts the misidentification of an iguanodon finger bone as a nose bone. Another story describes the excavation of a pit in Belgium in the 1870s that netted 130 tons of bones. Preservation and conservation methods are discussed throughout, plus improvements in museum display, like the use of 3D printing to allow an original tyrannosaurus rex from the States to be replicated and put on display at the Paris museum this summer.

Is this the era of camaraderie among comic book publishers? Last year it seemed publishers including IDW Publishing, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Dynamite Comics were able to structure an unprecedented number of crossovers or mash-ups. At Emerald City Comicon this weekend Dark Horse Comics and BOOM! Studios announced the latest and perhaps greatest mash-up coming our way in 2016: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes meets the characters created by Pierre Boulle in The Planet of the Apes in the new series Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes.

You also have the latest high-concept genre mash-up with The Planet of the Apes franchise bringing the science fiction component and Tarzan bringing the fantasy component to the story. Tim Seeley (Revival) and David Walker (Power Man and Iron Fist) will serve as story writers on the five-issue miniseries. Fernando Dagnino (Suicide Squad) is interior artist with Duncan Fegredo cover art.

Note that this is not another “versus” story. It’s actually a team-up. In this new version of Tarzan, Tarzan and Ape Caesar were raised as brothers. They are separated by slave traders, but are reunited when Apes battle Man, taking the battleground from the jungles of Africa to “the center of the Earth,” according to the announcement for the series.

Dozens of adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan have made it to the big screen and TV, and the newest version is out next year. It’s not another Disney adaptation although the 1999 Disney version was pretty good. This new version offers some nice animation in its first international full-length trailer. It includes some futuristic concept updates to the original story, as seen in the trailer. And it includes the voice of one of those actresses we can’t get enough of–Jamie Ray Newman.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan has had many incarnations in the past 100 years, so it’s probably time that he is thrust into the far future as a 300-year-old human who, along with wife Jane, encounters a future world you might find in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, Nolan and Johnson’s Logan’s Run, or Richard Matheson’s I am Legend in the new one-shot comic book The Once and Future Tarzan. Tarzan faces strange creatures big and small, and a tribe of women who speak in a future French dialect, who he assists on their quest. Tarzan is a well-educated survivalist who communes with the animal kingdom–the main element that ties this future Tarzan to the Tarzan of our past.